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Early Crocuses Bloom, Witch Hazel Opens

What a week. Last Sunday we woke up to below zero and by Tuesday it was almost 60 degrees and I had crocuses blooming all over the place.

These are not the jumbo crocuses which will come along later, but the very early variety. One could mass them as they are not as vibrant as the later ones. Mine have jumped all over the lawn and walkways. Only the purples have bloomed.

Also, my witch hazel has opened. It is not nearly as spectacular as the one on Skiff avenue. I think it’s at the Billings place. Often they are mistaken for forsythia, which is a much brighter yellow and probably a month from bloom. Who knows, however with this crazy weather.

Color me humbled. Last week I repeated something a friend saw on the internet. The day after I turned in the column, the New York Times said it was a myth. It seems they were blaming the birth defects seen in Brazilian babies on a pesticide rather than the Zika virus. I learned awhile back to not believe everything people put on the internet, and yet I fell for it. (I do love a good conspiracy theory!) My son Reuben always says, “If the internet were a real place, you’d be ashamed to be seen there.”

I spent a couple of lovely days working on my sorely neglected shrub border. I went a little crazy with saws and clippers. I removed more than half of the branches from ninebarks, beauty bushes, Kousa dogwoods, spireas and burning bushes. I cut Annabelle hydrangeas to the ground and took and overgrown rose of Sharon down to some three-foot stubs.

I’ll probably regret it, but I must say it was rather satisfying.

How is it possible that I have weeds coming up everywhere. It’s just not right. I did let the chickens run free for several days. Those little pitchfork feet do a fine job of roughing up a bed but they need to go back to their yard as soon as they are a bit aggressive on the emerging bulbs.

I dug some leeks and was disappointed. Rabbits had eaten all the tops and only about two inches of the stalk was firm and edible. I have only myself to blame. I should have mulched them in October. My life is a series of “shoulds.” The carrots, on the other hand, are fabulous — crisp and sweet. We’ve been eating them every day along with some pea shoots.

The red Russian kale is pickable. It is growing in the unheated hoop house. Recently I sauteed a huge amount with olive oil and raspberry balsamic vinegar and served it over our new favorite thing — butternut squash ravioli. It’s in the dairy case in down-Island Cronig’s. Yummy!

My friend Sharlee and I were wondering why we have saved every copy of National Geographic for decades. The only plausible reason she could offer was, “Our parents saved them.” There you have it. The latest issue has a wonderful article titled Too Good to Waste. Some of the statistics are downright alarming. Every year 2.9 trillion pounds of food, about a third of what the world produces, never gets eaten. The United States alone discards 133 billion pounds. To produce that food, oil is used to the tune of 70 times more than was lost in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Part of the problem is our desire for the perfect. We who grow our own know that there are misshapen potatoes and carrots, stunted cabbages, half-filled-out ears of corn and crooked beans and squashes. These foods are perfectly fine but we would not choose them at the supermarket.

I was raised in the clean-plate club and remembered some of the starving children in — fill in the country. My mother used China. I used Biafra on my children. Why? We certainly weren’t shipping it there?

The gleaning project here on the Vineyard is a wonderful organization. The gathered food is enjoyed by the soup kitchens and schools.

Doug Rauch, former president of Trader Joe’s, opened a nonprofit market in Dorchester called the Daily Table. He says hunger and wasted food are two problems with one solution. Food for thought.